​South Korea ‘knocking at Eurasian door’

Days after the US and the EU threatened Russia with more sanctions, following its gas row with Ukraine, unexpectedly good news for President Putin came from Seoul – one of the key Washington’s allies in the Asia-Pacific.

South Korean President Park Geon-hye has ended a landmark trip to
Central Asia, aimed at creating a huge single market to rival the
EU and push for closer Eurasian energy cooperation.

‘Eurasian initiative’: Made in Korea

If implemented, President Park’s project will deal a further blow
to the already shattered Western policy of isolating Russia.
Moreover, it will make Moscow a centerpiece of “Eurasian
initiative,” a brainchild of South Korea’s first female
president, which falls in line with President Putin’s own
aspirations and integration initiatives on the post-Soviet space
in the vast Asia-Pacific region.

President Park’s six-day tour, which included her visits to
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and brought a rich crop
of multi-million energy and infrastructure contracts, has laid
the groundwork for closer economic ties with the Central Asian
nations, linking Asia with Europe.

“We should connect energy infrastructure, such as a power
networks, gas and oil pipelines in the region, and push for
Eurasian energy cooperation in a win-win situation, such as
jointly developing shale gas in China and oil and gas in East
Siberia,” – President Park said last October at a
conference, unveiling her “Eurasian initiative.”

Already at that time, the South Korean leader called for the
binding of Eurasian nations closer together by linking roads and
railways for the construction of a multi-purpose logistics
networks. The initiative features two things: building a
“Silk Road Express” (SRX) and establishing vast energy
networks. Apart from its huge oil and gas reserves, Russia’s role
in the project, as it is seen in Seoul, is determined by its
geography – Russia’s territory acquires a large part of Eurasia’s
landmass. The proposed Trans-Siberian express will start from
South Korea’s Busan and extend to London via North Korea and
Russia.

Once the SRX is connected, transportation time from South Korean
Busan to locations in Europe will only take 14 days as opposed to
the current 45 days, which involves travelling through the Suez
Channel, according the South Korea’s National Unification
Advisory Council. South Korean President Park Geon-hye believes
that the new Eurasia will offer fresh opportunities for
investment and job opportunities by becoming an integrated
continent to lead future generations.

Addressing the vast Korean diaspora

President Park’s trip to Central Asia also served as an occasion
to shed light on the possible role ethnic Koreans of the
post-Soviet regions could assume in consolidating partnership
between South Korea and the newly-independent states. About
400,000 ethnic Koreans live in the former Soviet republics, with
more than 280,000 of them settling in the three nations, visited
by the South Korean leader last week.

Commenting on the issue, leading Korean media and political
pundits say various measures should be implemented to help
connect the descendants of Koreans who fled Japan’s colonial rule
on the peninsula. One of the aims of President Park’s visit was
to promote transnational “Korean identity” by
revitalizing cultural ties and making it easier for ethnic
Koreans from the region to visit and stay here.

Russian Koreans are also set to play quite a role. It is reported
that a number of ethnic Korean-Russians are seeking to enter
South Korea form Moscow via the demilitarized zone of Panmunjom,
to commemorate the 150th anniversary of migration to Russia. The
first Korean settlers began fleeing to Russia in 1864. Later some
of them were forcibly resettled in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and
other Soviet republics.

As President Park came up with her “Eurasian
initiative,” the Rally Organization Committee ( ROC)
consisting of 40 Koreans from Russia came up with a plan to make
the trip from Moscow to North Korean and then to South Korea’s
Busan “to draw a line of unification.”

It is reported that the committee wants the ethnic
Korean-Russians delegation to visit the Gaeston Industrial
Complex (GIC) in the border area and Panmunjom to “support
peaceful relations and unification.” ROC wants the group to
arrive in GIC on August 15, Independence Day. If permission is
received from Pyongyang the trip may start as early as the first
week of July, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

Korean Peninsula: a long way to peace and reconciliation

Forging closer Central Asia economic ties and playing the
“Korean diaspora” card can be seen as the key to making
President Park’s “Eurasian Initiative” a reality and
turning South Korea into one of the key players in the region. It
must be noted that President Park has discussed the issue of the
Trans-Siberian Railway with President Putin already twice last
year. However, little progress has been made, so far mainly due
to hostile inter-Korean ties. So, the future of the “Eurasia
Initiative” largely depends on relations between the North
and the South, and a wide range of related security and other
issues.

The situation in the Korean Peninsula and major security concerns
emanating from the dangerous stand-off between South and North
Korea has become a subject of ongoing debate, involving
generations of political and public figures, experts and
political pundits in the Asia-Pacific and far beyond. The
discussion, often seen as an exchange of heated rhetoric between
the parties involved was kick-started in the early 1950s. The
Korean war – one of the most distinct moments in the global
rivalry of the cold-war era split Korea into two hostile states.

Nearly six decades after the major divisive line split the Korean
Peninsula into two disjoined parts, the debate on the core
existential question “How to handle the Korean crisis”
has fitted well into the 21st century security agenda, with no
quick solution in sight seen by the world powers involved in the
six-party talks on the Korean crisis.

International efforts aimed at bringing the North Korea hermit
state to the negotiations table and making it abandon its weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) programs were never a diplomatic
picnic. It was always a bumpy road, full of zigzags and dramatic
turnarounds. In fact, very modest progress achieved in decades
was largely overshadowed by muscle-flexing, missile tests and
military drills, seen as the major deterrent instruments for the
North. Complicating the negotiating process, the few genuine
diplomatic efforts were plagued by the great powers’ hidden
agendas and rivalry, a regional tug-of-war and the North Korean
leaders’ desire to obtain deadly weapons and delivery systems at
any cost.

This was the case 40, 30, 20 years ago and this is how things
stand now. With the Kim ruling dynasty in North Korea showing
powerful survival instincts, with no signs that the bizarre
regime will eventually collapse due to its mounting
socio-economic problems, six-party diplomacy may well look like a
futile exercise or cat-and-mouse play.

While looking for renewed efforts to unravel the Korean riddle,
or rather, untie the Korean knot, one must understand the very
nature of the nuclear gamble, which has been staged by North
Korea’s successive leaders. All hopes that the young North Korean
leader might adopt a more conciliatory stance and start his reset
policy with South Korea have failed. The expectations of
rapprochement faded away last spring, when the region found
itself on the brink of another large-scale military conflict.

There is more than one reason to believe why the Korean peninsula
risks remaining a powder keg for the world in coming years. The
first reason is the common plain logic of the North Korean
leadership. This logic is built on the notion that with the
nuclear baton in its hand, it would never be attacked by the West
and its Asia-Pacific allies. So, nuclear weapons are de-facto a
guarantee that the hermit regime will never become a subject of
outside military intervention, like in Libya or Syria.

The new North Korean leader cited this reason while unveiling his
ambitious nuclear arms development program last April.

The second reason why nuclear arms are so dear to the hearts of
North Korean leaders is rooted in the fact that they have already
got used to regard nuclear threat as some sort of North Korean
“strategic commodity,” effectively traded to the West to
get much-needed rice, fuel and basic commodities in return. For
the isolated North Korean economy, desperate for cash and
technologies, the nuclear bomb is not only an instrument to deter
neighbors, but also a major bread-winner. The nuclear
cat-and-mouse game with the members of the six-party talks in
recent years and decades has many times helped the North to get
much-needed food stuffs, fuel for electric power plants, and
more.

The third reason why the WMD programs eventually became a
“do-or-die” test North Korea is related to the very
ideological foundation of the North Korean regime. Successive
representatives of the Kim ruling dynasty were traditionally
styling themselves as a living pinnacle of the Juche idea – North
Korea’s official philosophy of self-reliance.

Acquiring WMD is respectively seen by North Korean ideology as a
necessary precondition for building the land of Juche – strong
and prosperous, ready to show big teeth to the Americans and
their allies.

The escalating Ukrainian crisis, which has already led to major
disruption internationally and caused the US and Russia to lock
horns on many global issues, may cripple the six-party talks on
the Korean crisis even further.

However, the situation in the Korean Peninsula is a reminder that
world powers should not be involved in zero sum games, but rather
unite their efforts to meet the major threats and challenges,
emanating from the North-South standoff.

What is at stake is not only the “Eurasian Initiative”
of President Park and the related integration plans, which may
eventually change the face of Eurasia, but also the stability and
security of the vast region, where Russia and South Korea are
major players.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.